Thursday, March 1, 2012

Bergers in a Flash

My grandmother (living), was the daughter of Gideon Gottlieb
Berger and Georgiana Wellons. Gideon and Georgiana were married in 1919
in Yreka, Siskiyou, California.[1] At the time, Gideon was a minister
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Sisson; Georgiana was a school teacher in
nearby Edgewood.[2]

Gideon's father,
John W. Berger, was also a minister. He preached for the Evangelical
Association in German and was the son of Rhineland-Palatinate immigrants.[2, 3] Gideon was born in Wabash County,
Indiana on 11 Oct 1885 and came to Oakland, Alameda, California in 1891.[2, 4, 5] He was one of nine children.[3] Gideon lived in California throughout his life and died in 1965.[2, 6]

Gideon's father,
John, was born in Marshall County, Indiana on 17 August 1841.[3] His
father, Heinrich Michael Berger, was a farmer who had arrived in the US around
1832.[6] When the Civil War broke out,
John enlisted in Company K of the 29th Indiana Infantry
Regiment. He fought at Shiloh before
becoming ill and being discharged.[3] In
1866 John married the daughter of Swiss immigrants, Susanna vonAllmen in Evansville, Vanderburgh, Indiana.[7, 8] John, through his church work, lived in
Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and lastly California in addition to the
several years he spent doing missionary work in Germany.[3] He died in Oakland, Alameda, California in
1891.[9]

John’s father, (Heinrich) Michael Berger, was born in 1788 in
Annweiler, Germany.[10] He and his wife,
Friederika Matz, had their first known child in 1814 in this same area.[11]

Coats of Arms of the Südwestpfalz and Südliche Weinstraße, present-day districts in the
Rhineland-Palatinate which encompass the Berger family's ancestral homeland.

Total word count (excluding sources): 267; written for the 115th Carnival of Genealogy.

Your post was interesting to me on a number of levels -- the conciseness of writing, the great sourcing --- and most of all the fact that Gideon and Georgianna were married in Yreka --- which is just a hop, skip and a jump over (45 miles) the Siskiyou Pass from where I live.

About

I'm a 20-something, long-time genealogy enthusiast from Northern California. My paternal ancestry is mostly concentrated in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada. On my mother's side, I am a 6th generation Californian, with ties further back to many of the lower 48 states.